Far Beneath The In-Between

discovery: The Hubble Telescope just celebrated its 23rd...

Fri, 03 May 2013 10:36:55 -0400

The Hubble Telescope just celebrated its 23rd Anniversary of being in Space! Check out some of it’s most incredible shots and learn more, here - http://bit.ly/ZTHuG1

odditiesoflife: Glass Beach, Northern California From 1950 to...

Fri, 03 May 2013 10:36:53 -0400

odditiesoflife:

Glass Beach, Northern California

From 1950 to 1967, residents of Fort Bragg, California chose to dispose of their waste by hurling it off the cliffs above a beach. No object was too toxic or too large such as household appliances, automobiles, and all matter of trash were tossed into the crashing waves below, eventually earning it the name The Dumps. Then in 1967, city leaders closed and reclaimed the beach. Various cleanup programs were undertaken.

Over the next several decades, the pounding waves cleaned the beach by breaking down everything but glass turning the sand into a sparkling, multicolored bed of smooth glass stones. The California Department of Parks and Recreation purchased the land and incorporated it into MacKerricher State Park in 2002.

sagansense: Study: Cannabis Compound Might Have Use As An HIV...

Fri, 03 May 2013 10:36:46 -0400

sagansense:

Study: Cannabis Compound Might Have Use As An HIV Drug

The chemical compound in cannabis, THC, appears to be able to damage and weaken the most common strain of the HIV virus.

Before you light up a spliff, though, this is only a preliminary result reached under laboratory conditions, and further research will be needed.

THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, is the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis — it’s the chemical that gets the user stoned. Synthetic versions of it have been developed for research purposes, and it’s this that was used to attack the HIV-1 virus, which represents the vast majority (more than 90 percent) of all HIV types.

The way it works is by interaction with the cannabinoid type-2 (CB2) receptor in white blood cells, specifically the macrophages. Macrophages are one of many types of white blood cell in humans. While the main cells, the lymphocytes, do the bulk of the work in fighting infection by tracking down and destroying germs with antibodies, macrophages form a kind of backup part of the immune system — attracted to damaged cells, they surround and engulf them while also alerting lymphocytes of new dangers.

Macrophages have an unpleasant weakness, though, in that they are one of the first types of cells to be infected by HIV when it enters the body. The virus can live inside macrophages for days, weeks or months, travelling around the body, infecting other cells and acting as an extremely effective pollinator of HIV.

Stopping the HIV virus from infecting macrophages is one method researchers are investigating, as it would dramatically curtail the speed at which the infection progresses and would give time for other antiretrovirals to help keep it at bay, or even remove it.

The CB2 receptor in macrophages is stimulated normally when THC enters the bloodstream, so nothing unusual there. However, it appears that macrophages that have their CB2 receptor stimulated are stronger when it comes to fighting and weakening the HIV-1 virus.

This was discovered when the research team from the Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia infected macrophages with the HIV-1 virus, before then exposing cell cultures to one of three types of synthetic THC that specifically target the CB2 receptor. Comparing these cell cultures after seven days against a control group revealed a clear decrease in the rate of HIV-1 infection. Effectively, the macrophages had become stronger at keeping the HIV-1 virus out.

Pathologist Yuri Persidsky from Temple University, one of the study’s authors, said: “The synthetic compounds we used in our study may show promise in helping the body fight HIV-1 infection. As compounds like these are improved further and made widely available, we will continue to explore their potential to fight other viral diseases that are notoriously difficult to treat.”

An added benefit of targeting only the CB2 receptor is that its only affect is to stimulate the macrophages — the psychoactive component of THC is experienced when the CB1 receptor gets targeted. Synthetic THC compounds can be produced to only target the CB2 receptor in this way. THC has also been shown in studies not to suppress the immune systems of those who take it, meaning that the findings could provide hints at a future drug that, in combination with other methods, could be used for suppressing the HIV-1 virus.

The study has been published in The Journal of Leukocyte Biology.

image: image: An example of a mouse macrophage reaching out to absorb to particles (possibly pathogens)magnaram/Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0

the-science-llama: infinity-imagined: Neurons growing in a...

Fri, 03 May 2013 10:36:41 -0400

the-science-llama:

infinity-imagined:

Neurons growing in a cell culture

These time lapse animations use phase contrast microscopy to show neural stem cells in a nutrient medium for 4 hours. They reveal the dynamic growth and recycling of dendrites and synapses as neurons establish relationships with each other. The social behavior of these cells creates the incredible properties of the mind and brain.

Credit: University of Victoria Medical Sciences

Your brain is doing this RIGHT NOW. Re-wiring as you remember something or learn something, constantly changing.

myampgoesto11: Shadia and Raja Alem: The Black...

Fri, 03 May 2013 10:36:37 -0400

myampgoesto11:

Shadia and Raja Alem: The Black Arch

2011.
STAINLESS STEEL, CAST IRON, FABRIC AND STONE WITH PROJECTED PHOTOGRAPHS AND SOUND INSTALLATION 700 × 20 × 350 CM.
PAVILION OF THE KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA AT THE 54TH INTERNATIONAL ART EXHIBITION – LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA

colchrishadfield: The Galapagos - just far enough apart to give...

Fri, 03 May 2013 10:36:34 -0400

colchrishadfield:

The Galapagos - just far enough apart to give Darwin something to think about.

the-star-stuff: Incredible Pictures of Early Science Labs

Fri, 03 May 2013 10:36:26 -0400

French scientist Jollivet Castelot in his laboratory, 1880

Thomas A. Edison Laboratories, Building No. 5., West Orange, New Jersey

Unidentified student in a science laboratory, mid-1940s

Carlsberg Laboratory, Copenhagen, Denmark

Edison Botanic Research Laboratory, Fort Myers, Florida

A man working with laboratory equipment, 1943

Dr. Hale Charch, a member of the team which invented moisture proof cellophane in his laboratory, c. 1927

Marie Curie and Pierre Curie in their laboratory in 1923

Female undergraduates at work in the laboratory at Girton College, Cambridge University, c. 1900

the-star-stuff:

Incredible Pictures of Early Science Labs

natureoflight: Bio-light…light fixture that runs on bacteria.

Fri, 03 May 2013 10:36:19 -0400

natureoflight:

Bio-light…light fixture that runs on bacteria.

ecocides: An international team has discovered an exotic double...

Fri, 03 May 2013 10:36:15 -0400

ecocides:

An international team has discovered an exotic double object that consists of a tiny, but unusually heavy neutron star that spins 25 times each second, orbited every two and a half hours by a white dwarf star. The neutron star is a pulsar that is giving off radio waves that can be picked up on Earth by radio telescopes. Although this unusual pair is very interesting in its own right it is also a unique laboratory for testing the limits of physical theories.

This pulsar is named PSR J0348+0432 and is the remains of a supernova explosion. It is twice as heavy as the Sun, but just 20 kilometres across. The gravity at its surface is more than 300 billion times stronger than that on Earth and at its centre every sugar-cubed-sized volume has more than one billion tonnes of matter squeezed into it. Its companion white dwarf star is only slightly less exotic; it is the glowing remains of a much lighter star that has lost its atmosphere and is slowly cooling.

Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which explains gravity as a consequence of the curvature of spacetime created by the presence of mass and energy, has withstood all tests since it was first published almost a century ago. But it cannot be the final explanation and must ultimately break down.

Full article (via ESO)

infinity-imagined: Patterns on Mars

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 10:34:53 -0400

infinity-imagined:

Patterns on Mars

ikenbot: The Diamond Ring Effect The Baily’s beads effect is...

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 09:59:32 -0400

ikenbot:

The Diamond Ring Effect

The Baily’s beads effect is a feature of total solar eclipses.

As the moon “grazes” by the Sun during a solar eclipse, the rugged lunar limb topography allows beads of sunlight to shine through in some places, and not in others. The name is in honor of Francis Baily who first provided an exact explanation of the phenomenon in 1836. The diamond ring effect is seen when only one bead is left; a shining diamond set in a bright ring around the lunar silhouette.

astronemma: Controversially, Physicist Argues Time Is Real Is...

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 09:59:27 -0400

astronemma:

Controversially, Physicist Argues Time Is Real

Is time real, or the ultimate illusion?

Most physicists would say the latter, but Lee Smolin challenges this orthodoxy in his new book, “Time Reborn”. In a conversation with Duke University neuroscientist Warren Meck, theoretical physicist Smolin, who’s based at Canada’s Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, argued for the controversial idea that time is real. “Time is paramount,” he said, “and the experience we all have of reality being in the present moment is not an illusion, but the deepest clue we have to the fundamental nature of reality.”

Read more: [x]

President Clinton, Stephen Colbert, and Chelsea Clinton’s...

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 09:59:24 -0400

President Clinton, Stephen Colbert, and Chelsea Clinton’s Adventures on Twitter.

architectura: Inspired Public Restrooms

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 09:59:22 -0400

architectura:

Inspired Public Restrooms

crookedindifference: The Hubble eXtreme Deep Field (XDF) is an...

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 13:12:06 -0400

crookedindifference:

The Hubble eXtreme Deep Field (XDF) is an image of a small part of space in the center of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field within the constellation Fornax, showing the deepest optical view in space.

Released on September 25, 2012, the XDF image compiled 10 years of previous images and shows galaxies from 13.2 billion years ago. The exposure time was two million seconds, or approximately 23 days. The faintest galaxies are one ten-billionth the brightness of what the human eye can see. Many of the smaller galaxies are very young galaxies that eventually became the major galaxies, like the Milky Way and other galaxies in our galactic neighborhood.

The Hubble eXtreme Deep Field, or XDF, adds another 5,500 galaxies to those discovered in the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field.

staceythinx: If you like dewy insects, you’re going to LOVE the...

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 13:12:01 -0400

staceythinx:

If you like dewy insects, you’re going to LOVE the macro photography of Ondrej Pakan. If you like your insects dry, he’s got plenty of those too.

atomstargazer: 50th anniversary of the discovery of...

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 13:11:59 -0400

atomstargazer:

50th anniversary of the discovery of quasars

On March 16, 1963, Caltech astronomer Maarten Schmidt announced in the journal Nature that he had solved a puzzle about the quasi-stellar radio source 3C273. This object appeared starlike, like a point of light, with a mysterious jet. But its spectrum – the range of wavelengths of its light – looked odd. Astronomers routinely use spectra to learn the composition of distant objects. But, in 1963, emission lines in the spectrum of 3C273 didn’t appear to match any known chemical elements. Schmidt had a sudden realization that 3C273 contained the very ordinary element hydrogen. He realized that the spectral lines of hydrogen appeared strange because they were highly shifted toward the red end of the spectrum. Such a large red shift could occur if 3C273 were very distant, about three billion light-years away.

To be so far away and still visible, 3C273 must be intrinsically very bright. It’s now thought to shine with the light of two trillion stars like our sun. That’s hundreds of times the light of our entire Milky Way galaxy. Yet 3C273 appears to be less than a light-year across, in contrast to 100,000 light-years for our Milky Way.

So 3C273 is not only distant. It is also exceedingly luminous, implying powerful energy-producing processes unknown in 1963.

Dr. Schmidt told EarthSky by email that he recognized immediately the implications of his revelation, which in fact occurred on February 5, 1963. He said:

This realization came immediately: my wife still remembers that I was pacing up and down much of the evening.

Today, hundreds of thousands of quasars are known, and many are more distant and more powerful than 3C273. It’s no exaggeration to say they turned the science of astronomy on its ear. Why, for example, are these powerful quasars located so far away in space? Because light travels at a finite speed (186,000 miles per second), we are seeing distant objects in space in the distant past. In other words, quasars existed in early universe. They do not exist in our time. Why?

In the 1960s, 3C273 and other quasars like it were strong evidence against the Fred Hoyle’s Steady State theory, which suggested that matter is continuously being created as the universe expands, leading to a universe that is the same everywhere. The quasars showed the universe is not the same everywhere and thus helped usher in Big Bang cosmology.

But Steady State theory had been losing ground, even before 1963. The biggest change caused by Maarten Schmidt’s revelation about the quasar 3C273 was in the way we think about our universe.

In other words, the idea that 3C273 was extremely luminous, and yet occupied such a relatively small space, suggested powerful energies that astronomers had not contemplated before. 3C273 gave astronomers one of their first hints that we live in a universe of colossal explosive events – and extreme temperatures and luminosities – a place where mysterious black holes abound and play a major role.

According to a March 2013 email from Caltech:

In 1963, Schmidt’s discovery gave us an unprecedented look at how the universe behaved at a much younger period in its history – billions of years before the birth of the sun and its planets. Later, Schmidt, along with his colleague Donald Lynden-Bell, discovered that quasars are galaxies harboring supermassive black holes billions of light-years away – not stars in our own galaxy, as was once believed. His seminal work dramatically increased the scale of the observable universe and advanced our present view on the violent nature of the universe in which massive black holes play a dominant role.

What are quasars? Astronomers today believe that a quasar is a compact region in the center of a galaxy in the early universe. The compact region is thought to surround a central supermassive black hole, much like the black hole thought to reside in the center of our own Milky Way galaxy and many (or most) other galaxies. The powerful luminosity of a quasar is thought to be the result of processes taking place in an accretion disk, or disk of material surrounding the black hole, as these supermassive black holes consume stars that pass too near.

ULAS J1120+0641, farthest quasar known as of 2011. The quasar appears as a faint red dot close to the center. Composite image created from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Chinese-born U.S. astrophysicist Hong-Yee Chiu coined the name quasar in May 1964, in the publication Physics Today. He wrote:

So far, the clumsily long name ‘quasi-stellar radio sources’ is used to describe these objects. Because the nature of these objects is entirely unknown, it is hard to prepare a short, appropriate nomenclature for them so that their essential properties are obvious from their name. For convenience, the abbreviated form ‘quasar’ will be used throughout this paper.

Today, the farthest known quasar is ULAS J1120+0641. Its co-moving distance is 28.85 billion light-years.

Bottom line: On March 16, 1963, astronomer Maarten Schmidt’s flash of inspiration led to the understanding that quasi-stellar radio sources, or quasars, exist in the very distant universe. Quasars became the most distant, and most luminous, objects known. They changed the way we think about the universe.

ikenbot: Gemini Missions On May 25, 1961, three weeks after...

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 13:11:53 -0400

ikenbot:

Gemini Missions

On May 25, 1961, three weeks after Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American in space, President John F. Kennedy announced the goal of sending astronauts to the moon before the end of the decade.

To facilitate this goal, NASA expanded the existing manned space flight program in December 1961 to include the development of a two-man spacecraft. The program was officially designated Gemini on January 3, 1962.

More Content: Amazing Archive of High-Res Photos from NASA’s Gemini Missions

fastcodesign: It’s wild to think of what is going on beneath...

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 13:11:51 -0400

fastcodesign:

It’s wild to think of what is going on beneath you. Here is An Unbelievable Glimpse Of The Tunnels In Progress Beneath New York City

The pictures show the current progress of the MTA’s East Side Access project, one which doesn’t actually involve a subway but rather will connect the Long Island Rail Road to Grand Central Terminal for the first time. It’s currently expected to open in 2019. It involves a lot of digging.

myampgoesto11: Black and white underwater photography by Hengki...

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 12:29:12 -0400

myampgoesto11:

Black and white underwater photography by Hengki Koentjoro